Girls With Boys' Names
by TinyTurian
Summary: Nineteen years old, Samantha Traynor is bored with college, bored with sex, and to an extent, bored with her friends. But in a girl named Jack, she finds an unlikely companion. (College AU, present day)
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

* * *

 **India Rubber**

* * *

Samantha wakes up next to something strange.

She's slept with a few different girls since she got back for this semester, three to be exact, as part of trying out the whole carefree college girl lifestyle she'd supposedly been missing out on. Until now those were all normal, non-descript girls like herself.

But no one like this. No one with a bald head and tattoos and piercings and scars covering nearly every inch of her body.

Judging by the intensity of the light creeping in through the blinders, Samantha guesses it's somewhere between eight and ten in the morning. She wonders if she could crawl out from under the covers and sneak out of the room without waking up the girl beside her. Not that she has anywhere she needs to be, she'd just rather not be here.

She knew that this casual, one-night stand sort of thing wasn't for her, and she hates her friends for convincing her to try it. Now she's in bed with some – probably – drug-addled delinquent who looks like she just broke out of solitary confinement.

God, she was good in bed though.

Her brain seems to feel the need to retrace her steps from last night, as if to remind her of the… missteps that brought her here. And her head hurts so much from her hangover and her muscles so much from the things she and this girl did, that she just lies there and cringes at yesterday.

She was standing in someone's bathroom, staring in the mirror and feeling weirded out by how slutty her reflection looked, and someone was knocking on the door so hard that she couldn't bring herself to pee, so she just ended up sitting down on the toilet seat for a couple of minutes and taking off her pumps to let her feet breathe and not be squeezed to bits.

When she opened the door she was immediately knocked aside by some guy and girl who rushed past her into the bathroom and slammed the door shut and she winced as she was knocked into the wall. She wandered off to look for Kelly or Emma, but she knew her chances of finding them in this haze of alcohol and horny students were slim at best. Still, she kept mumbling excuses while she pushed through the bodies, much to the annoyance of their occupants who breathed their alcohol-tinted moans in her face.

As she kept fighting through the crowd, her goal gradually changed from finding Kelly and Emma to simply finding a way out, but even that seemed to be impossible. At some point, she remembers, she saw the girl now lying next to her, her tattooed neck, face and scalp in the crowd jumping out her, and she flinched, as if she'd seen a zombie. Then the girl was lost behind someone taller, though she'd remained for a few seconds in Samantha's brain as she pressed on.

She ended up hitting her knee against a make-shift bar before she found an exit. The guy behind the table asked her if she wanted a drink from the keg, and laughed and walked off when she asked for water. She let her stomach press against the table as she leaned over it and tried to breathe out and get her bearings. Bodies pressed up against her back and then ceased to do so, only to be replaced by more, and a song she liked was playing but the speakers were so blown out and the volume so overly loud that it made her head tremor.

It took a while before she realised that the guy standing next to her was talking to her, and even when she did she couldn't make out a word he was saying. Still, it was pretty clear that he was flirting with her. His expression and body language made it seem like he was trying to be suave and kind of romantic, and Samantha thought that this was an odd place to try that approach, and she just smiled and nodded and pretended that she could hear him while she waited for a gap to appear in the mob behind them.

Before she knew it the guy had bought her a drink. It was a beer too, and she hates beer, and she looked down into the red plastic cup that was placed in front of her and contemplated her situation and she just felt tired and depressed and wanted to be back in her bed, listening to Sarah snoring in the bunk below her, but even if she made it out of this place it would be another twenty minute walk across campus in the cold dead of night before she was there.

She heard someone near her shout over the noise of the room, but it didn't register. Something bumped into her right leg and when she looked down she saw her suitor doubled over on the floor next to her, clutching his stomach, and standing over him was the girl she'd seen in the crowd, her fists clenched and her knuckles white.

That was hardly necessary, Samantha thought.

The girl's top was little more than a few leather straps covering only the most vital parts, and as the guy stumbled off into the crowd zombie-girl slid up next to her and Samantha almost flinched away again, but the tattoos covering every inch of skin on this girl's body were so strange and imposing in the room's imperfect lighting, that she just stood and stared.

The zombie-girl rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward and smiled up at Samantha and motioned for her to get closer. Samantha did, all while staring at a bar-code on her head, and the girl arched her neck and screamed a name into her ear, but somehow Samantha still couldn't make it out over the music, so she nodded a little awkwardly, pretending like she'd heard, and shouted her own name back, though it probably wasn't loud enough either.

The girl smiled again and reached out so she could snatch Samantha's beer, and as she drank it she grabbed Samantha by the arm and pulled her along as she began elbowing through the crowd in what Samantha dearly hoped was the direction of an exit.

It was, and out in the cool night air, walking across the lamp-lit campus with this barely clothed girl, she suddenly felt a lot less tired, and a lot more buzzed.

* * *

The girl's eyes open suddenly and without warning and it catches Samantha off guard, making her almost fall out of the bed. The girl yawns and on her breath Samantha can feel the mix of the many alcoholic beverages she tasted every time they kissed last night.

"Good morning…" the girl mutters.

"…Hey." Samantha responds.

"Sleep well?" The girl says and cracks that same grin from yesterday, the one that just seems a little off.

"Yeah, uh… I've got to be somewhere!" Samantha blurts out and jumps out of bed. She looks around for her clothes and finds them scattered all over the room, which in itself is just a bloody mess.

"Really? Where?"

Samantha finds her panties and puts her legs into them. "Class."

"Oh." Her tattooed bedmate props herself up with a pillow and watches as Samantha puts on her bra, which she finds thrown over a computer monitor. "What class?"

 _Shit_.

"Uh… contemporary literature."

"Oh, nice."

Getting her stupid dress on seems to take forever, especially with this girl watching her. She can feel her skin burning under her gaze, and every time she tries to sneak a look back at her their eyes meet, and that just makes it worse.

Whatever, she just needs to get out of here. She sits down on the end of the bed, struggling with the zipper on her back.

"Want some help there?" The girl asks behind her.

"What?" Samantha shoots back a glare. "No! I'm fine."

The girl shrugs. "It just… seemed like you were in a hurry."

"I am."

Samantha stands up. The zipper is only halfway up her back, but it'll have to do. Her face will catch on fire if she stays here another second. She starts putting her shoes on, then remembers that they climbed a set of stairs together last night, and grabs them and heads straight for the door. If she tried to run downstairs in these things, she'd probably fall and break her neck.

"Hey, Samantha?"

She stops in the doorway. The girl throws the covers of her body and gets up and stands a little too close to Samantha.

"Just, uh… have fun in class." She smiles.

Samantha nods.

"Yeah. Thanks."

* * *

At 12:45, Samantha is in Lucy's having breakfast - or maybe this counts as brunch - with Sarah and Emma. It turned out her friend from last night lives pretty much as far from Samantha's dorm as is possible while still being on university grounds, and Samantha had to walk across the entire campus in her heels and minimalist blue dress in the middle of the day to get back to her room.

Once there she opened all the windows, brushed her teeth, showered and then wrapped herself in a towel and laid down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. She considered going back to the economics essay she hasn't touched in weeks, but she could barely bring herself to move her arms. She stayed like that for 30 minutes or so, listening to the muffled voices and music coming through the walls, until Emma called and Samantha remembered she hadn't eaten since seven PM last night.

The shop is full of people standing in unorganized lines, orders being exchanged and the clattering of plates and cutlery. The three of them manage to snatch a table by one of the windows, giving them a wide view of the green grass and baby-blue sky and the white college buildings sandwiched in between.

"So where did you and Kelly disappear to yesterday?" Sarah asks as she sits down opposite Samantha.

"I thought she was with you guys." Samantha says, biting into her grilled cheese.

"She was, but she disappeared around the same time as you."

Samantha feels herself frowning. She was feeling a lot better when she walked here in the brisk midday, wearing shoes and clothes that she actually likes and find comfortable, but they've barely been here five minutes and Sarah is already questioning her. She should have known this would turn into an interrogation.

"I didn't disappear; I just went to the bathroom." She looks over at Emma who's sitting between her and the window. "I told you where I was going, right Emma?"

Emma only mumbles something back, poking at her salad.

"Well you didn't come back to our room all night, so you must have gone somewhere. Or were you in the bathroom all night, Sam?"

Samantha sighs. "No."

"So, where?" Sarah hasn't even looked at her food yet.

Some guy walking by them drops his drink and as the liquid spills out some of it splashes onto Samantha's trainers. The guy, who looks small and scared, a freshman, starts apologising profusely, but Samantha assures him it's alright and uses the chance to continue working on her sandwich. Sarah doesn't even glance at the boy though, and just continues staring her down.

"Well?"

"I went home with someone." Samantha concedes through a mouthful of toast. She knows if she doesn't admit it now, Sarah's going to be on her about it all day.

"I knew it!" Sarah's face lights up and she gleefully clasps her hands together. Emma doesn't even look up from her salad. "Who was it?"

"I don't know..."

"You don't know?"

"No, I mean, I know, it's just, it was nobod-"

Samantha trails off when she sees a familiar face among the people behind Sarah. People have been rushing in and out since they got here, but zombie girl stands out like sore thumb against the background of normals. She walks towards Samantha, who's quickly slipping into panic.

"Hey."

"Are you following me?" Samantha manages to blurt out before her friends even have time to notice the tattooed girl that has appeared beside them, and she immediately regrets it as she realises that the girl was about to pass with only a greeting.

Instead she stops, looking a little surprised.

"I came here to get something to eat." She says calmly, nodding to the paper-wrapped sandwich in her hand. "The grilled cheese here is insane."

Now Sarah's staring at both them, eyes darting between them at the speed of light.

"How was contemporary literature, by the way?"

"Uh," Samantha stutters, trying to will the girl away with her eyes. "I missed it, thanks to you."

"Oh, fuck, I'm sorry." For a moment it looks like she's going to leave, but then she places a hand on the table and leans into Samantha's face. "But you know they don't do classes on Saturdays here, right?"

With that, she spins around and walks to the door. Samantha watches her the whole way, and when she turns back around she sees Sarah looking her up and down suspiciously. She waits for the questions to hit her like a tidal wave, but Sarah just stares, then she suddenly looks away and finally takes a bite of her BLT.

Next to her, Emma hasn't even looked up from her plate.

* * *

 **I have no excuse for this.**


	2. Chapter 2

Mildly nsfw stuff at the end. I don't even know if it counts to be honest but just so you know...

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

* * *

 **Hi, how are you?**

* * *

Samantha spends the rest of the weekend not doing much of anything. That afternoon she finds herself in Emma's dorm room, which Emma is lucky enough to have all to herself, reading together in silence while Emma plays her Mercury Rev CDs on her stereo. Come Sunday, she doesn't even leave her room; she just lies in bed with her eyes closed, and the door keeps slamming as Sarah hurries out to meet up with some friend of hers, only to come back an hour later, make a racket and then leave again.

When Sarah comes loudly rushing back into the room for the fifth time, Samantha lets out an outstanding groan.

"Just make up your damn mind already."

"Sorry?"

The chuckle and one word response that comes back at her is not Sarah's. It's Ashley's.

Samantha jolts up, gripping the railing of her bunk. "Ashley! I'm sorry, I thought you were-"

"My sister?" Ashley's standing in the middle of the room, wearing black jeans and a blue sleeveless shirt, smiling and looking a little disoriented.

Samantha can feel her face flushing. "Yeah."

Ashley walks over to Sarah's closet and starts going through it. "What'd she do this time?"

"Oh, it's just... nothing."

When they she first met Ashley, which, Samantha realises, would be almost one year ago now, she could hardly believe that she was Sarah's sister. Regardless of their resemblance, she still can't quite accept that someone so level-headed and organized is related to her roommate. Samantha would also add that Ashley's smart, tall with long brown hair, and extremely pretty, but that's not relevant.

"She was talking about you this morning." Ashley muses as she takes a few blouses that must belong to her out of the closet. "Or... not about you really, but I got the feeling it had to do with you."

Samantha sits up straight and lets her legs dangle over the edge of the bed. "Really?"

"Yeah, she was being weird again, asking if I knew some short, bald girl with tattoos, or something."

"Oh." _Of course she was._

By now, Ashley's pile of stolen clothes is nearly almost a foot tall. Lifting it up in her arms, she goes over to the door.

"So, do you?" Samantha asks.

"What? Oh," Ashley halts in the doorway and touches a finger to her lower lip. "Well, I don't know her exactly, but I think I know who she was talking about. I've seen someone like that in some of the weirder clubs over in town, though I wouldn't say she was 'bald' exactly…."

She smiles, and the room lights up with her.

"No one you would be hanging out with anyway. I'll see you around, Sam!"

Ashley closes the door behind her with her foot and Samantha flops back down onto her mattress and sighs.

She wonders what exactly Sarah told Ashley.

Not that it matters.

Eventually she has no choice but to go out and find something better to eat than snacking on Sarah's stash of crisps. When she gets back she forces herself to do some work, but after two hours the paper's only a couple hundred words longer.

At eight PM, Sarah comes home and wants to know where all her chips have gone.

* * *

The lecture hall is alive with the sound of conversation, bags opening and books being dropped onto the old, wooden desks. As usual, Samantha takes a seat high up near the exit, so that she can sit by herself and so that if she's called upon she won't feel like the eyes of every person in the room digging into her.

Five, ten minutes pass before Professor Esheel arrives, half-heartedly apologizing as she sets her things down on the catheter, but Samantha barely notices her come in. As the professor begins her lecture, she's staring off into the engravings off the expansive oak wall behind her, thinking about... she's not actually sure what she's thinking about. Lately she hasn't been quite the exemplary student she was last year. The nerves and indecision are nothing new, but the fear doesn't spur her anymore. It's just paralyzing. And ever since she woke up in that girls bed two days she's had this feeling, like... like...

 _Like she's fourteen again, walking home from Laura Palmer's place in spring._

She groans into her hands and runs them through her hair. What's that even supposed to mean?

Nostalgia, yeah, that's probably the right word, though she doesn't really get what childhood memories of hers could be triggered by zombie girl.

She lets her palms slip down over her eyes and stares into the creases while Esheel's voice drones on below her. She got nearly 9 hours of sleep last night, but she's just so damn tired. If she was lethargic like Emma, she'd fall asleep right here, sitting up and with her eyes wide open.

Samantha takes her hands off her eyes and finds them scanning over a long, bar-code like line on the back of a round, shaved head.

She nearly jumps out of her seat.

Samantha stretches her neck, trying to get a better view. There's no question about who it is. Centralized on this person's mostly uncovered back is a smooth, ink skull, which Samantha can very clearly remember running her hands over only two nights ago.

 _Why the hell is she here?_

The clock on her phone's display reads **09:06**. There's almost an hour left of the lecture, but she hasn't heard a word of it anyway.

She stands a little too quickly, bringing down the unopened books on her desk with her, and a few heads turn in her direction as she scrambles to pick them up. Without looking up to see if zombie girl's head is among them, she heads straight for the exit, pushes the heavy door out of her way, and she's out.

* * *

Out in the empty hallway, the sunlight's washing in through the long rows of windows that take up most of the walls. Samantha ducks into the first women's restroom she comes across, where she's surrounded by blue marble tiles stretching from floor to ceiling. She does a quick survey of the stalls, allowing herself a sigh of relief when she finds them all empty.

She doesn't know why she's acting this way.

She throws her bag onto the floor and stands in front of the mirror. She splashes some water in her face and she's reminded of that tiny bathroom she found herself in two nights ago, when her feet were blistered and hurting and her head was full of wine.

She could use some wine right now.

There's a soft click and the door behind her opens, and with a split second to guess who might enter, Samantha can only think of one person. And of course it's her.

Samantha freezes, water still pouring in the sink in front of her, and she watches via the mirror as the girl casually walks in while the door slowly falls to a close behind her. The loose tank top she has on is just barely more presentable than the leather straps from the other day, and her eyes set off her Cheshire cat grin when they meet Samantha's in the mirror.

"You forgot your pencil."

When she holds up the red pencil with the little eraser shaped like a teddy bear on the end, Samantha can feel herself practically radiating embarrassment.

"Thanks, um..."

The girl walks up to her and holds out the pen and Samantha is forced to turn around and briefly loses her words. She carefully reaches out and slips it into her jeans pocket and unconsciously rests her hands on the fake marble sink behind her.

"...fancy meeting you here."

The girl leans against a blue wall. "Yeah."

In the silence, Samantha can hear the hum of the ventilation system, the drip of the faucet, and a million other things. She feels like she shouldn't be here, but her legs are frozen to the floor.

"Do you, um..." She starts, and then trails off again.

"What?"

"Are you really in econ-221?"

The girl doesn't seem bothered by the question, like Samantha thought she might. Instead she just laughs.

"You know, I didn't think I was, but I checked my curriculum and apparently I am. I'd just... forgotten to go yet."

Samantha smiles a little. She's not sure whether that's a joke or not.

"It was, uh... really interesting though."

"Really?" Samantha laughs. "Cause I hate it."

"Oh, good." The girl exhales. "Yeah, me too, that was fucking awful."

She takes out a cigarette and lights it, and Samantha looks up at the ceiling for a fire alarm or a sprinkler, remembering high school. Her left arm crawls around her waist. "Sorry about the contemporary literature thing."

The girl just chews on the end of her cigarette. "I'm only here cause of you, you know."

Samantha looks away, down at the floor. Hearing that isn't helping with her rising body heat.

"How did you know I'm in this class?"

"Asked around. You know who Kasumi is?"

Samantha shakes her head.

"Japanese chick, kinda creepy, always wears a hoodie?" She sees the blank look on Samantha's face. "It doesn't matter. She knew you'd be here anyway."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, she, like, watches people. It's weird."

Samantha shifts her weight from one foot to another. "And that's why we're here, talking in the bathroom?"

"Uh-huh."

Zombie girl drops the cigarette butt from her lips and squashes it under the sole of her military boot.

"You had breakfast yet?" she asks.

"No." Samantha lies.

* * *

The sex is warm and sweaty, and after five minutes they move from the bed down to the floor, where Samantha lies in the shadow under the desk with her legs spread wide open and the girl keeps cursing every time she hits her head against the wooden board above them, but they don't switch position until Samantha comes.

Half an hour later her friend is sprawled out on the bed, while Samantha's still lying on her back in her little cave, catching her breath. Looking up she can see jagged little words that have been scratched into the desks underside. She couldn't make them out while she had a shaved head lodged between her thighs, but she can read them now, though they don't tell her much.

 _Shit_

 _Fuck_

 _OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO_

Or maybe that's supposed to be _0000000000000000000_

 _Jack_

 _dissapearhere_

"Who's Jack?" Samantha asks.

For a few moments there's no response, only silence. Finally, Samantha's curiosity is indulged.

"You slept with me twice without knowing my name?"

 _Oh._

"Shit, maybe I was wrong about you."

Samantha slides out from her hiding place as quickly as she can and gets up on her feet. Standing there completely naked in the middle of the room, she's feeling very stupid.

"I'm sorry." She says and approaches the bed. "It was really loud in there."

Jack laughs. "And you never thought of asking?"

Samantha sits down on the edge of the bed and fiddles with the sheets. "It would have felt dumb."

"Yeah!" Jack cackles. "Yeah, you're pretty fucking dumb!"

She looks up and sees the apologetic frown in Samantha's face.

"What," she laughs again, softer this time. "You don't really think I care, do you?"

"No, of course not." Samantha says, even though it sounds like her pride's been wounded, just a little.

All the windows are open and the blinds are rattling in the forceful breeze, but the room's still so fucking hot. Samantha brings her legs up onto the bed and wipes the sweat from her forehead. Jack coughs and lights a cigarette.

"So is this the part where you run off and ditch me again?"

Samantha smiles and edges closer. "Not unless you want me to."

Jack kisses her.

"Good."


	3. Chapter 3

I had some excuses for the writing in this chapter, but I forgot what they were.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

* * *

 **Yerself is steam**

* * *

"So, what are you majoring in?"

Jack chews on the inside of her cheek. She stares up at the ceiling, into the dull, muddy brown, and sighs. She can feel Samantha's head pressing down softly on her right bicep.

"...this feels forced."

Jack sits up. She climbs over Samantha, their thighs and arms brushing together briefly, and gets out of bed.

"Where's that joint..."

Samantha turns her head, watching Jack slowly walk in little circles around the room. "Hey, I've really enjoyed coming over here every afternoon for the past three days, but we gotta do _something_ other than sleep and have sex."

Jack's now standing over her desk, hands at her sides and her back turned to Samantha. She seems to have found what she's looking for. "Do we?"

"It's just… a really simple question, Jack."

Samantha stares at Jack's backside while she bends over the desk. She watches the landscape of tattoos twist as Jack moves, stepping into the light of the window, and when she does all but her silhouette disappears. Samantha hears the click of a lighter.

Jack picks up Samantha's shirt off of the floor and throws it at her.

"We're getting something to eat. If I'm gonna do a fucking Q and A it's not gonna be on an empty stomach."

* * *

Jack lies down in the grass. Samantha watches her lower her mostly bare body down to the tics and insects. She carefully joins her in the shadow of the nearby elm tree, folding her legs under her body as she sits, hoping her jeans won't get too dirty.

Jack still has her joint in her mouth, only taking it out when she wants to drink from her Styrofoam cup. She takes it out again, and Samantha opens her mouth to protest.

"Shi-! Fuck!"

She's too slow, and Jack flails around in the grass as coffee spills over her chin. What does go into her mouth, she coughs up onto the ground. She wipes her face with the back of her arm.

"That never works but I keep doing it for some reason."

Samantha smiles sympathetically and reaches down into the paper bag with the donuts they got at the coffee shop. She takes one out and holds it over Jack's face, who cranes her head takes a huge bite. She closes her eyes and moans with pleasure, powdered sugar spreading all over lips.

"So, you wanna talk now?" Sam asks.

Jack's first reply is completely hidden by the excessive amount of dough stuffed in her mouth. She chews for a while, her jaw working incessantly, and swallows loudly when she's done. She tries again.

"Not really, but go ahead."

Samantha repeats the question she asked nearly half an hour ago.

"Art." Jack says curtly. She motions for Samantha to feed her again. Samantha looks on with amazement as Jack fits the entire remaining half of the powdered donut into her mouth.

"That makes sense." she muses.

"No!" Jack exclaims as soon as she's able to speak. "I know what you're thinking: 'Oh, she's like one of those gay, punk chicks who like, paints with her piss and menstrual blood' or some shit like that, but I'm not. I'm only doing this cause it's the only fucking thing they'd let me into. People see my hair and tattoos think 'oh, well, she's either fucking crazy or an artist.' Then they find out I'm gay and go 'oh, she must be a fucking great crazy artist.'"

Jack is speaking rapidly and with what Samantha supposes you could call passion, though she's not quite sure about that, and she's staring at her intently with round, red eyes.

"I've never even seen Un Chien Andalou," She adds proudly, "and I don't care if I ever do."

Sam just nods her head. "Okay."

Jack relaxes back into the grass shards and blows some smoke into the air. "Like, okay, you're chopping up a cow or whatever. Great, I don't care. She wags a finger at Samantha. "C'mon, donut me."

Samantha peers into the bag. "Uh, chocolate, or…"

Jack grabs at the air. "Just give me the whole thing."

Samantha obeys.

"You don't really, like, sound like you wanna be here." She says, resting herself against her arm.

"I don- I _do-nut,_ get it?"

Jack's head bobs as she chews, rubbing her hair in the dirt. She's eating these at an incredible speed, Samantha notes. She twitches her neck; it sort of feels like someone's touching her, very faintly.

"And you're doing, like… economics?"

"Communications."

"Ah." Jack starts work on her fourth donut. "Good thing we got that cleared up. So, next question!"

Samantha opens her mouth, but doesn't say anything. She thinks, tries to recall what exactly she wanted to know. She can't remember.

Jack pushes the paper bag towards Samantha. "You gonna have one or what?"

Samantha sticks a single finger into the bag and holds it up. "You got them all."

Jack turns her head and stares at her. "Dude…"

"Yeah?"

"There's a praying mantis on your neck."

* * *

Jack keeps showing up to econ, even though Samantha's pretty sure she's not actually taking it. About thirty minutes late or more every single time, but she shows up. She sits with Samantha and does a great job of distracting her, which she's grateful for. After, or sooner, sometimes, they go to Jack's. When Samantha doesn't have time, she makes it.

Since Jack doesn't have phone since a few weeks back ("Electronics and bong water don't mix," she informs Samantha sagely), this is how all their meetings are arranged. Jack takes to calling her Sam, just like her friends do. Samantha's a little disappointed. She always liked to be called Samantha by her girlfriends, it made things feel real.

Still, they fuck, nap, eat, talk a little, and Jack gets high.

It's surprisingly nice.

"So watcha been up to lately?"

"Huh?"

The question catches Samantha off guard. She's lying in her bunk with her hands behind her head and a textbook lying open on her chest. She's thinking about things, people, everything's bouncing around off the walls in her brain, back and forth without any sense of direction. Snapping back to reality she sees the upper half of Sarah's face, eyes peering into the bunk.

"You've been going off somewhere whenever you don't have class all week. Usually you just sit here in your bunk and mope."

"I don't 'mope'."

"Whatever."

Samantha pushes herself up and sighs, considering just how much she can disclose to Sarah. She'd managed to forget about the situation at the sandwich shop the earlier in the week, but she doubts Sarah has. Not with the way she's resting her chin on the bedframe and staring up at her with those big, round eyes of hers.

Nothing, that's what she can tell her.

"I… uh, I joined a study group." She lies lazily.

"Uh-huh?" Sarah says, and Samantha marvels at her ability to feign stupidity. "Do you have a new girlfriend in your study group?"

Is Jack her girlfriend? She doesn't really know.

"No, I can't say I do."

"Aw," Sarah pouts, dropping down to the floor. "That's a shame."

 _Is Jack her girlfriend?_

It's a question harder than anything posed to her in her textbooks. Their relationship is based solely around sex, she knows that, but it's not like they don't talk, like they don't make each other laugh when they're lying in bed. Jack practically makes her laugh with every other thing that leaves her mouth, whether it's intentional or not, and making Jack laugh is hardly difficult when she's stoned almost every waking hour.

Maybe the 'just sex' thing would bother her more if it wasn't so good.

And it's not like Jack has actually used those words.

Maybe she just needs to figure out whether _she_ wants Jack to be her girlfriend or not.

Maybe she should listen to what Sarah's saying to her.

* * *

They take the bus into town. Sarah wants them to get a cab, but Samantha won't let her. It only takes like fifteen minutes to get to Cinema anyway. Kelly is waiting outside when they get there, and when they hug Samantha realizes she hasn't seen her in over a week. Emma's holding a window table for them inside, staring down into it even as she greets them.

Emma stays at the table while Sarah and Samantha go to get drinks. She already has a tiny little espresso cup that she keeps on stirring with seemingly no intention to actually drink it. They have to wait for a while. Even if it's supposed to be a café it's pretty much a bar on weekends, only thankfully with less dancing. After a while they get their rosé and head back. Sarah wants them to get a bottle and Samantha has to put her foot down again. She doesn't want to stay too long, and she doesn't want to have to worry about getting Sarah home, or for her to go home with someone against her better judgement.

Back at their table, Samantha can barely hear a word her friends are saying. Not so much because the surrounding conversation or the muffled dream-pop soundtrack, but because she just can't keep her mind together. Even the old movie posters on the walls which usually completely enchant her (she always tries to remember the names so she can watch them later, but she always forgets) can't keep her attention.

Every thought keeps reverting back to Jack. She knows it's stupid, but she can't help it. After her little thinking session this afternoon, as she was returning from catching breath of air outside, she found a message scrawled in permanent marker on her and Sarah's door: **LETS HANG OUT TONIGHT.**

She doesn't quite get Jack, like, for example, why she couldn't just have knocked. She's kind of mad she vandalized her door, and that she had to try to explain it (or, rather, deny any knowledge of it) to Sarah, but somehow she still found herself considering taking Jack up on the offer. She decided against it though. She's nearly spent every day with her for this last week, and she doesn't want to come off as too clingy, too dependent.

And because Samantha had come to the conclusion that Jack probably isn't her girlfriend.

By the time an hour and a half has passed, Samantha's been lulled into a hazy, alcoholic sleepiness. Sarah and Kelly don't seem to mind. They're too concentrated on, whatever they're doing, to notice, but the environment's keeping her awake anyway.

Behind Kelly is the door to the smoke room, and staring through the window into the dark cloud is making her feel nauseous. For all she knows the room could be on fire, she wouldn't know until she could feel the heat of the flames burning through the door.

She imagines Cinema burning down together with the whole block, all of them screaming as the flames eat them alive. In its current state, her mind deems this fairly plausible.

"I'm gonna get some air." She says.

She's not sure if they hear her, but it doesn't matter. She squeezes past the people blocking the doorway and the black air outside hits her like a cold shower. She breathes in a good chunk of it and leans back against one of the café windows. People are standing around her smoking. Traffic lights are blinking like satellites, and Samantha thinks about Jack. So vividly, she can almost see her standing on the other side of the street.

…

 _She can definitely see her standing on the other side of the street._

She may be thinking the traffic lights are satellites and that the streetlamps look like stars, it never took much to get her drunk, but it's definitely Jack standing over there, she's spent enough time with that back tattoo to recognize it even this far away. She's standing under one of the… stars, making out with some girl she has pushed up against the building wall.

Samantha feels a gasp travel up through her lunges and choke to death in the back of her throat.

She can't look away, but then she doesn't really try. She watches them go at it. Sometimes her view is blocked by the people walking out from the nearby nightclub. She waits patiently for them to pass, then continues watching. Whenever the light at the nearby crosswalk turns green, she thinks she could go over there and say… something. She wouldn't want to disturb them though. She tries to get a better look at the blonde girl, but Jack is covering her with all of her body. She's probably shorter than Samantha, then.

Then Kelly's standing next to her, smoking a cigarette. Samantha hopes she won't notice Jack, then realizes Kelly probably wouldn't know about her anyway.

"Hey." Kelly says, with a sweet little smile.

"Hello."

"You've been out here a while."

Has she? She doesn't know, and she doesn't know what counts as a while to Kelly. You can't see time pass this late at night.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realize..." She mutters. Kelly softly shakes her head, dismissing her apology. She takes a drag from her cigarette. Samantha has never seen it before, but Kelly smokes with a magnificent poise and grace. It's almost a politeness, and, Samantha thinks, it'd be impossible for anyone to resent her for giving them second hand lung cancer.

It's completely different from Jack.

At the thought, Samantha throws another glance over the street.

"Are you going anywhere?" asks Kelly, two of her pale fingers beautifully squeezing that cigarette.

"Yeah," Samantha says, "home. You?"

"I know a party," she says. "I take it you don't wanna come?"

"I'm fine, thanks. Is Sarah going with you?"

"Of course."

"And Emma?"

"I think so."

She resists looking back at Jack. It dawns on her that pretty much everyone else out here is smoking too, because the air is coated a light gray and tastes bitterly of nicotine. At the nearest table, some guys have a water pipe.

She can see Kelly's face clearly next to her, who says, "We should hang out sometime. It's been a while." And Samantha says, "Yes, it has, we should." meaning it. She says, "Tell Sarah to go easy on drinks."

Kelly laughs, a beautiful, musical laugh.

"Aright."

They hug, and Kelly goes back inside.

When Samantha looks back across the street, Jack and the girl are gone.


End file.
